Andrew Martin

"What a debut! Early Work is one of the wittiest, wisest (sometimes silliest, in the best sense), and bravest novels about wrestling with the early stages of life and love, of creative and destructive urges, I’ve read in a while. The angst of the young and reasonably comfortable isn’t always pretty, but Andrew Martin possesses the prose magic to make it hilarious, illuminating, moving." —Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask and The Fun Parts For young writers of a certain temperament—if they haven’t had such notions beaten out of them by MFA programs and the Internet—the delusion persists that great writing must be sought in what W. B. Yeats once called the “foul rag and bone shop of the heart.” That’s where Peter Cunningham has been looking for inspiration for his novel—that is, when he isn’t teaching at the local women’s prison, walking his dog, getting high, and wondering whether it’s time to tie the knot with his college girlfriend, a medical student whose night shifts have become a standing rebuke to his own lack of direction. When Peter meets Leslie, a sexual adventurer taking a break from her fiancé, he gets a glimpse of what he wishes and imagines himself to be: a writer of talent and nerve. Her rag-and-bone shop may be as squalid as his own, but at least she knows her way around the shelves. Over the course of a Virginia summer, their charged, increasingly intimate friendship opens the door to difficult questions about love and literary ambition. With a keen irony reminiscent of Sam Lipsyte or Lorrie Moore, and a romantic streak as wide as Roberto Bolaño’s, Andrew Martin’s Early Work marks the debut of a writer as funny and attentive as any novelist of his generation. “Beautifully executed and very funny, Early Work is a sharp-eyed, sharp-voiced debut that I didn’t want to put down.” —Julia Pierpont, author of Among the Ten Thousand Things and The Little Book of Feminist Saints

A Novel

Early Work

Expanding the world of his classic-in-the-making debut novel Early Work, Andrew Martin’s Cool for America is a hilarious collection of overlapping stories that explores the dark zone between artistic ambition and its achievement The collection is bookended by the misadventures of Leslie, a young woman (first introduced in Early Work) who moves from New York to Missoula, Montana to try to draw herself out of a lingering depression, and, over the course of the book, gains painful insight into herself through a series of intense friendships and relationships. Other stories follow young men and women, alone and in couples, pushing hard against, and often crashing into, the limits of their abilities as writers and partners. In one story, two New Jersey siblings with substance-abuse problems relapse together on Christmas Eve; in another, a young couple tries to make sense of an increasingly unhinged veterinarian who seems to be tapping, deliberately or otherwise, into the unspoken troubles between them. In tales about characters as they age from punk shows and benders to book clubs and art museums, the promise of community acts—at least temporarily—as a stay against despair. Running throughout Cool for America is the characters’ yearning for transcendence through art: the hope that, maybe, the perfect, or even just the good-enough sentence, can finally make things right.

Stories

Cool for America

Why is the Victoria Line so hot? What is an Electrical Multiple Unit? Is it really possible to ride from Kings Cross to Kings Cross on the Circle line?The London Underground is the oldest, most sprawling and illogical metropolitan transport system in the world, the result of a series of botch-jobs and improvisations.Yet it transports over one billion passengers every year - and this figure is rising. It is iconic, recognised the world over, and loved and despised by Londoners in equal measure. Blending reportage, humour and personal encounters, Andrew Martin embarks on a wonderfully engaging social history of London's underground railway system (which despite its name, is in fact fifty five per cent overground). Along the way he attempts to untangle the mess that is the Northern Line, visit every station in a single day - and find out which gaps to be especially mindful of. Underground, Overground is a highly enjoyable, witty and informative history of everything you need to know about the Tube.

A Passenger's History of the Tube

Underground, Overground

Baghdad in the Great War, and a case of espionage for detective Jim Stringer.

The Baghdad Railway Club

The author of the beloved Jim Stringer series turns from Edwardian railways to contemporary London: Mayfair - home of the super-rich.

The Yellow Diamond

Soot

On the first day of the Somme enlisted railwayman Jim Stringer lies trapped in a shell hole, smoking cigarette after cigarette under the bullets and the blazing sun. He calculates his chances of survival - even before they departed for France, a member of Jim's unit had been found dead. During the stand-off that follows, Jim and his comrades must operate by night the vitally important trains carrying munitions to the Front, through a ghostly landscape of shattered trees where high explosive and shrapnel shells rain down. Close co-operation and trust are vital. Yet proof piles up of an enemy within, and as a ferocious military policeman pursues his investigation into the original killing, the finger of accusation begins to point towards Jim himself . . .

The Somme Stations

The first in a series of atmospheric railway mysteries featuring Jim Stringer

The Necropolis Railway

A terribly funny and lovably louche novel about five friends growing older, if not always up, from Andrew Martin, author of Early Work and Cool for America. Without Cassandra, Aaron would probably be dead. Fortunately, she won’t leave him—despite the drinking, flirting, solipsism, armchair socialism, overspending, infidelity, catastrophic depression, and disparate but increasingly frequent spells of drug- and booze-addled debauchery. Unfortunately, she might be reaching the end of her rope. Cass and Aaron, like the other neurotic, ambivalent intellectuals in their orbit, are getting older. There’s Malcolm, with his own alcoholism and marginally more successful writing career; his partner, Violet, a doctor with little patience for both; Antonia, a teaching fellow whose book about ecocide may get her tenure at a prestigious university near Harvard Square—yes, that one. When Sam, a charming trust-fund punk at the center of this loose network, dies suddenly, and a global pandemic takes hold, all five must contend with the lives they’ve made: their desires and disappointments, habits and hang-ups, pathologies and addictions, and the possibilities of making art and being good as the earth whirls to its end. Down Time marks the delightful return of Andrew Martin, the author of the pitch-perfect slacker classics Early Work and Cool for America. Compulsively readable and contagiously intelligent, this is a wryly comic social novel of settling down, selling out, growing up, and getting out that turns a terribly funny and hyper-literate eye on our most desperately guarded ambitions: to love and be loved, to know and be known, to stay sane, if only just.

Down Time

Andrew Martin has been described as 'the laureate of railways', having written many books with railway themes. But Andrew has always been obsessed with the Paris Metro, hence An Ode to the Paris M e tro, the first English history of the Metro for the general reader.

Metropolitain is as stylish as the Metro itself and laced with cultural references. Andrew explains why Last Tango in Paris is a great Metro film, and what the Metro chase scene in the classic thriller , Le Samourai , says about Parisian culture. He describes how he came to appreciate the beauty of Guimard's sinuous green Metro entrances when he bought a lily of the valley and observed it flowering on his desk. We meet Andrew's half-English, half-French friend, Julian, who runs a society dedicated to Metro history. He tells Andrew, 'A Metro station is like the wine cellar of chateau, which is a very nice thing to be reminded of.'

The book takes the reader on a constant tour of Paris, both underground and over. But Paris, and the Metro, is changing, undergoing a huge expansion. This, and the imminence of the Paris Olympics, make this a timely title.

Metropolitain: An Ode to the Paris Metro

The Rise and Fall of the Sleeper

Night Trains

Recounts the rescue of the Chaukan party, stranded by a monsoon, by a decorated veteran of the Royal Flying Corps, with the aid of a herd of elephants and their mahouts.

The Untold Story of World War Two's Most Daring Jungle Rescue

Flight by Elephant

"After the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, many railways were 'rationalised' and gradually shut down. Rural communities were isolated without ready access to the main lines and steam trains slowly gave way to diesel and electric traction. But some people were not prepared to let the romance of train travel die. Thanks to their efforts, many of these lines passed into community ownership and are now booming with new armies of dedicated volunteers. Andrew Martin goes out to meet these enthusiasts and find out just what it is about preserved railways which makes people so devoted. From the inspiration for Thomas the Tank Engine to John Betjeman's battle against encroaching modernity, Steam Trains Today is a wonderful journey across Britain from Aviemore to Epping"--Publisher's description.

Journeys Along Britain's Heritage Railways

Steam Trains Today

London, 1976. In Belgravia in the heat of summer, Lee Jones, a faded and embittered rock star, is checking out a group of women through the heavy cigarette smoke in a crowded pub. He makes eye contact with one, and winks. After allowing glances to linger for a while longer, he finally moves towards her. In that moment, his programme of terror - years in the making - has begun. Months later, the first of the many chilling headlines to come appears: 'Police hunting winking killer.' Meanwhile in France. Charles Underhill, a wealthy Englishman living in Paris, has good reason to be interested in the activities of the so-called Winking Killer. With a past to hide and his future precarious, Charles is determined to discover the Winker's identity. In the overheating cities of London, Oxford, Paris and Nice, a game of cat and mouse develops, and catching someone's eye becomes increasingly perilous. But if no one dares look, a killer can hide in plain sight . . . From 'a master of historical crime fiction' (The Guardian), The Winker is a gripping thriller that won't let you look away.

The Winker

A stunning historical novel of crime in the trenches from the acclaimed author of the Jim Stringer series.

Somme Stations

London, present day. Jean, a failing journalist in her late thirties, finds herself entertaining a married man - a handsome, arrogant ex-barrister, universally known by his surname: Coates. Unsure of the relationship and wanting to develop her career, she begins to write a one-woman show about a mind-reader she comes across in her research - a woman who performed in the 19th Century under the name The Martian Girl, before disappearing without a trace. * London, 1898. Kate French, a striking young woman with a love for the stage, is honing her craft in the music halls of East London at the turn of the century. As the Martian Girl, she performs each night with her mind-reading partner, the cynical and money-grubbing Joseph Draper. As Jean makes progress on her show, Kate - long since dead - begins to consume her thoughts. Jean starts to suspect that Draper fully believed in Kate's ability to read minds and that he found the idea deeply disturbing. What really happened between the two of them all those years ago? And why does Jean feel such an intense bond with The Martian Girl? As the line between Jean and Kate begins to blur, the fates of the two women are destined to transcend time, and finally to intersect. Brilliantly conceived, The Martian Girl is a dazzling thriller that will get inside your mind.

A London Mystery

The Martian Girl

In POWDER SMOKE we see the return of Jim Stringer, Martin's Railway Detective, back by popular demand, and Corsair's first book in the series. All previous books were Faber (the last in 2014). York Station, 1925, and a revolver is aimed at Stringer...

Untitled Andrew Martin Novel

'A steamy whodunnit . . . This may well be the best fiction about the railways since Dickens.' Independent on Sunday 'Genuinely gripping . . . The sort of thing D. H. Lawrence might have written had he been less verbose or been blessed with a sense of humour.' Peter Parker, Evening Standard (Books of the Year) A superbly atmospheric thriller of sabotage, suspicion and steam, The Blackpool Highflyer brings a new twist to tales of Edwardian England and amateur sleuthing. Assigned to drive holidaymakers to the seaside resort of Blackpool in the hot summer of 1905, Jim Stringer is happy to have left behind the grime and danger of life in London. But his dreams of beer and pretty women are soon shattered - when his high-speed train meets a huge millstone on the line . . . 'A clear winner in literary crime writing . . . Dazzling attention to detail and quality writing from one of our best contemporary male novelists.' Daily Express

The Blackpool Highflyer

Walter Bowler is a burglar. Fresh out of a young offenders' institute, he loses no time in getting back to work. But when he falls for a propositon involving the theft of six very rare and very valuable chairs, he finds himself in real trouble.

The Bobby Dazzlers

The latest in Andrew Martin's much-loved 'Jim Stringer, Steam Detective' series. 'Andrew Martin has recreated an extraordinarily convincing world . . . Terrific.' Daily Telegraph December, 1909. A train hits a snowdrift in the frozen Cleveland Hills. In the process of clearing the line a body is discovered, and so begins a dangerous case for struggling railway detective Jim Stringer, a case which will take him from the Highlands to Fleet Street to the mighty blast furnaces of Ironopolis. Jim's faltering career hangs on whether he can solve the murder, but before long Jim finds himself fighting not just for his job, but also for his life . . . 'A wonderful evocation of Edwardian Britain . . . Tough, scary and funny, this is a novel for anyone who loves a page-turning detective story.' Independent on Sunday 'Stringer is at the heart of a series of historical crime novels that shows no sign of running out of steam.' Sunday Times

Andrew Martin

Books

Your next favorite book is out there